Friday, August 21, 2009

TWIFI, The Inevitable Sequel: Comments!

Twisty Faster's commenters are always way, way more than half the fun, and I just can't do a TWIFI without scrolling down into the comment section and being amazed by the progressive, well-reasoned, and thoroughly feminist attitudes displayed therein.

Pelicanh’s also been guilty of the, “I just find women’s bodies more attractive than men’s, so that’s why I only photograph women.” Of course, if that were the case, you’d see him photographing a range of body colors and sizes, wouldn’t you? He's an artist, he doesn't work for you, and he can photograph nothing but dogs' elbows if he wants. (Also, about half the photos are of his girlfriend, who only comes in one color and size.) He's under no obligation to turn his work into an 80's cartoon show with exactly one black kid and one kid in a wheelchair and one kid with the power of Heart.

Whenever dudes try to make women feel ‘beautiful’ they manage to talk down to them the whole time.The kind I hate the most is the “men like curves” talk whenever any woman in the media gets too skinny to be of sexual use to most dudes. As if the way dudes think we should feel is a replacement for the way that women actually feel.I care how dudes feel, though. I don't use it as a replacement for my own feelings, but this is kinda how it goes:

Me: Aw, I'm fat and Media Lady is skinny, guys must like her more than me.Guy: No, you look great, men like curves.Me: Yay, my perception that guys don't like me is corrected! I feel better about myself without feeling like I have to change! I now feel less bound by male expectations than I did before! Yay!

Urgh, Deviantart. Anyone here a member over there? Because the site definitely needs more feminism. Recently one of the “Daily Deviations” was a photo of black woman’s nude body in chains. Not problematic at all apparently, just a nice “fetish” photo!Yes, black people shouldn't be allowed to do anything that makes me uncomfortable. If only there were some sort of law about this.

(I think it's also interesting how this person seems to sort of assume the photographer must have been white. If the photographer was black, or the photo is a self-portrait, doesn't that change the problematicism quite a bit? Regardless of the race of the photographer, I think it's somewhere between bigoted and just plain dumb to think the model herself didn't know what she was doing, and requires our protection.)

If he were smrt smart he would realise that having to justify his work means that the work isn’t what he thinks it is.Total and epic fail.Rationalising one’s own objectification by celebrating that objectification doesn’t change anything. It is still exploitative crap.No, I haven’t seen the actual pictures. I don’t need to. The artist himself doesn’t think they have enough merit to stand on their own.I show you a painting of a great eagle breaking the chains that tie it to the earth. Ignoring for the moment what a tacky fuck I am, I tell you "this painting represents freedom."

Now, apparently, it must represent something else, because I talked about it. It's like Heisenberg's Painting.

And I love that "no, I haven't actually looked at the thing I'm condemning." That's how you keep the mind and spirit pure, sister!

But no matter how many feminists are on dA, magically few of their submissions are popular enough to make it to the front.I'm sure that's not true. I'd bet you've looked at a feminist's abstract digital rendering, a feminist's painting of songbirds, a feminist's photos of Rome, a feminist's sketches of the female form... but it's true, magically few pictures of men being violently humiliated and destroyed make the front page. Guess it's a conspiracy.

A man needs to know his parts. Clearly we should make porn showing men getting their members cut off and ripped apart. Clearly we need to show men getting my hot period blood across their face when I get off, because that’s porn. High class porn. Fresh cut off dick, that gets me hot damn it.Twisty has a pretty iron grip on what feedback she'll allow to appear on her blog. It's the only blog I know where you can watch the comment number go down over time as it is winnowed down to only the worthy. Opposing arguments get zapped right off, and check the trackbacks--no opposition there either! But people who agree with her in psychotic, disturbing, and violent ways: hunky-dory.

(Also, there's really no use in pointing this out to a psychotic person, but have you seen any porn lately? Women don't get chopped up, for shit's sake! They take their clothes off and sometimes have sex! That's much more comfortable!)

4 comments:

I don't think there's much point in being logical about it, darlin'. I get the impression many of these people won't be happy until all the men are dead, and they never have to suffer being looked at--in any fashion--by any of them.

Of course, then they'll get up in arms about how other women are judging them with the ingrained patriarchial eye.

LOL, "having to justify his work means that the work isn't what he thinks it is." Has this person ever been to a gallery opening or looked at an artist's website? Every artist in the world has an artist's statement that explains what they were trying to achieve & why. It's part of the art biz, not a sign that the person fears being condemned as a patriarchal oppressor.

There is some women-getting-cut-up porn out there – it's called ero-guro (erotic-grotesque). I think Twisty fails especially hard this time around. She wants to condemn porn that glorifies violence against women and goes for nude shots? Damn, that woman needs to learn how to Google.